Complex electronic systems such as airborne integrated data systems (AIDS) have assisted the operation and piloting of aircraft and airborne vehicles for some time. One example of such an AIDS system is the A310 data management unit (DMU), which has been employed effectively in many aircraft systems. The A310 DMU monitors aircraft vehicle performance and operating conditions repeatedly during flight. The A310 aircraft includes smart sensors and computer systems which gather information regarding a variety of flight parameters. The information acquired is sent to a digital information transfer system (DITS) receiver along a predetermined number of parallel channels, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,298,959 entitled DIGITAL INFORMATION TRANSFER SYSTEM (DITS) RECEIVER, granted to Frank D. Sundermeyer et al. and assigned to United Technologies Corporation. This patent is expressly referred to and incorporated herein by reference.
This patent describes the receipt of serial data in ARINC 429 format in parallel through several channels, some of them operating at low speed and others selectably operating at high speed. In order to test the performance of A310 DMU's during manufacturing, without actually conducting flight operations, a data base has been established to simulate the flight parameters to be presented to the DITS receiver.
To provide the DITS receiver with information from this data base, a digital transmitter is required which can produce serial words of information received in parallel from the data base serially at a plurality of parallel output channels at various signal speeds and according to ARINC 429 format. It is a further object of the invention to design a digital transmitter minimizing hardware costs and design complexity.